Plaskacz, Edward J. | Search NASA

NASA NTRS1990

Measurement and exploitation of mesh structure on the Connection Machine

A four-node shell element has been implemented on the Connection Machine using the direct vector method and an exchange algorithm previously used with a simpler element. It is shown that the method retains a large measure of its speed in the more complicated setting of a shell element. A hybrid interprocessor communication scheme for the exchange algorithm which uses NEWS within structured subdomains is described.

Plaskacz, Edward J.↗

NASA NTRS1989

Parallel processors and nonlinear structural dynamics algorithms and software

The adaptation of a finite element program with explicit time integration to a massively parallel SIMD (single instruction multiple data) computer, the CONNECTION Machine is described. The adaptation required the development of a new algorithm, called the exchange algorithm, in which all nodal variables are allocated to the element with an exchange of nodal forces at each time step. The architectural and C* programming language features of the CONNECTION Machine are also summarized. Various alternate data structures and associated algorithms for nonlinear finite element analysis are discussed and compared. Results are presented which demonstrate that the CONNECTION Machine is capable of outperforming the CRAY XMP/14.

Belytschko, Ted↗